Sunday, April 7, 2013

Jeff Bezos Just Made a Big Investment in Business Insider

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has invested a "significant" amount of money in Business Insider, according to an internal memo posted on the media company's website.

In total, Business Insider is receiving a $5 million investment from Bezos and other investors, according to the memo.

Henry Blodget, the CEO and editor-in-chief of Business Insider, said in the note to employees that Bezos sees parallels between Amazon.com and the New York City based business news organization.

It's interesting to note, that Amazon's good fortune has been Blodget's good fortune once before.

In late 1998?when Blodget was a tech analyst for Oppenheimer & Co.? he accurately predicted that Amazon's stock price would hit $400. Blodget's call made him some what of a media sensation and he soon after left Oppenheimer to work at Merrill Lynch.

Blodget has remained bullish on Amazon since then and it looks like Bezos is now bullish on Blodget's media bets.

Read Blodget's full memo to employees below:

Team,

I wanted to share the details of the financing we mentioned last night. (Apologies for not being able to share them then?closing these things is an administrative nightmare, and it took a few hours longer than we hoped.)

I'm going to post about this shortly after 10am. Please don't say anything or tweet about it until after the post hits.

Basically, Jeff Bezos is making a significant investment in the company. Our existing investors are also chipping in some more. In total, we're raising $5 million.

This capital will allow us to continue to invest aggressively in many areas of the business, including editorial, tech/product, sales and marketing, subscriptions, and events. As we mentioned last night, it will also allow us to expand our office.

Jeff's investment grew out of a dinner he and I had about a year ago. We talked about the business, and he was excited about it. (He sees some parallels with Amazon). A few months later, he expressed an interest in investing. My reaction was basically "Hell, yeah!"

Jeff's vision, leadership, and philosophy at Amazon have inspired a whole generation of startups and entrepreneurs, including me. Amazon has always focused on customers first, knowing that, if they do a great job at that, everything else will take care of itself. This obsession with customers and long-term focus are the reasons that Amazon has been so successful. And this philosophy is something that we very much want to emulate. (We have two sets of customers, obviously?readers and sponsors. And we're obsessed with both).

Jeff's interest, and Business Insider's extraordinary success over the past year, are due to your efforts on behalf of our readers and our clients. We have improved and grown dramatically, and we were pretty good to begin with.

Our goal is simple: To become the best digital business publication on the planet. We're making great progress toward that. And this investment will help us get there.

Thank you again for your incredible work over the past year. Here's to an even better 2013.

Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100619196

benjarvus green ellis shaka smart hungergames bagpipes aspirin aspirin 21 jump street

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.